August 22, 1999
London Highbury Garage
Evoking so many fragile, fleeting things with such deft simplicity, fashioning yet another of those perfect happy/sad sonic speedballs us doomed romantics constantly hunger for, [a]Madder Rose[/a]
Littered throughout the annals of pop music are a clutch of the plainest phrases, which, for all their initial simplicity, are rendered painfully poignant by their delivery, by the circumstances, by some magic we can't quite pinpoint... "Be my baby". "Walk on by". "It's too late baby, it's too late". Time to add another to the list.
Late in tonight's set, it happens. Billy Cote's melancholic guitars break for a second. Drummer Johnny Kick beats out a bare, Spector-esque tattoo. Mary Lorson closes her eyes, and sings, in a voice placed so perfectly between dissolution and absolution, "I know a place where we can go, where we can go".
Have you ever heard a roomful of hearts break as one? As perfect, cherishable moments go, it's almost enough to make you disregard the rest of tonight's set, which was, itself, pretty damned faultless: a spectral 'My Star', dedicated to Morphine's Mark Sandman; a supine take on the Stones' 'Moonlight Mile'; live readings of all those reasons Madder Rose have always been close to the beating arteries of warm-blooded mammals.
But to hit upon perfection like this moment (caught during 'Should Have Known') is something else. Evoking so many fragile, fleeting things with such deft simplicity, fashioning yet another of those perfect happy/sad sonic speedballs us doomed romantics constantly hunger for, Madder Rose have finally snatched the greatness some of us always suspected was theirs.
Start fashioning those pedestals right now.
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